1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a robot for gait training and an operating method thereof, and more particularly, to a robot for gait training and an operating method thereof for the purpose of rehabilitation of patients with walking disability.
2. Description of the Related Art
Patients with walking disability perform gait training by bending their legs or moving according to walking patterns guided by walking-assist robots put on their bodies. During gait training using the walking-assist robot, if any one of an angle, speed and torque of each joint among hip joints, knee joints and ankle joints is out of a standardized walking pattern appropriate for training for walking trainees, this means that the walking trainee is not performing the gait training according to a walking pattern appropriate for the rehabilitation training.
In a conventional art, walking trainees perform the gait training by driving walking-assist robots at a designated angle and speed while wearing the walking-assist robots on their legs. However, since it is difficult to determine whether the trainee performs the gait training in an appropriate walking pattern on the basis of movement of the legs at the designated angle and speed and to determine what training pattern is more appropriate for the walking trainee, effective gait training has been hard to achieve.
In addition, since the walking trainees wearing the walking-assist robots and performing the gait training have different body sizes, the conventional walking-assist robot is inconvenient in manually adjusting lengths of segments of the walking-assist robot to the body size of the walking trainees with assistance of a person who helps perform the gait training is necessary every time.
As the lengths of the segments are manually adjusted, it is difficult to adjust the walking-assist robot to an appropriate set of specific lengths of the walking trainee's body size, thus causing errors in adjustments. In addition, due to individual differences of the assistants who adjust the segment lengths, wearing the walking-assist robot tends to consume remarkably increased time and manpower.